Pride of a Nation: The 2011 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Funders

From idea to execution, ten CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists redefine what it means to be an American original. Here, we take a look at where they’re coming from, where they’re going, and the actor and musician muses who inspire them most right now.

“I learned how to shoot a machine gun,” exclaims Brooklyn Decker, the 24-year-old model-turned-actress (and other half to tennis superstar Andy Roddick) who’s just finished filming **Peter Berg’**s high-octane, alien-invasion flick, Battleship out next summer, in Hawaii. “At one point, I was sticking my arm through a windshield shooting it, and I started bleeding. Everyone was like, ‘Just use it!’ ”

As Decker (pictured above with Ohne Titel designers Alexa Adams and Flora Gill) points out, the rough-and-tumble demands of working on a big summer blockbuster like Battleship are obviously miles away from the more sedate photo shoots she’s used to working on. But now that the former Sports Illustrated pinup has made a commitment to acting—first in this past spring’s Just Go With It, with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, as well as the upcoming 2012 pregnancy-themed comedy, What To Expect When You’re Expecting (“My character basically breezes through her pregnancy, which is really annoying to watch,” she jokes. “If I’m honest, it’s setting an unrealistic standard for myself and every woman out there”)—she’s started to relish the prospect of picking up at least a few bumps and scrapes in the name of getting a good shot.

“It’s fun to bring stuff like that home,” she continues.“They’re like battle wounds. Every time we filmed that scene over the next couple of weeks, they had to add blood and a cut to match me cutting my arm.”

As the Harlem-born Yaya DaCosta explains, “The best thing about growing up in a city like New York is that it instills a real sense of understanding when it comes to other people’s cultures. The whole world is here.”

For the 28-year-old model-turned-actress, who is herself from Brazilian, West African, Native American, and Irish extraction (and, as a result, speaks a jaw-dropping five languages), having a mix of cultures around her growing up only helped to broaden her range.

“I can play someone from almost anywhere, and obviously that’s fun for an actor to explore,” she says. “I did a film at the beginning of the summer where I played an Ethiopian woman, and then I did a film at the end of the summer where I was Nigerian. It’s wonderful.”

It seems fitting then that DaCosta (who has now been acting for six years and can be seen alongside Justin Timberlake later this month in the action-thriller In Time) plays muse to Fashion Fund–nominated designers Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty, aka Suno, as the duo are known for mixing a variety of African, Indian, and European styles in their designs. “They told me the pattern of the skirt I was wearing was inspired by an East African print, and the dress underneath was Northern European,” says DaCosta. “The world is coming together, so why shouldn’t our clothes represent that?”

“As an abstract, fashion is terrifying to me,” exclaims Joanna Newsom, the California-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who appears alongside Fashion Fund nominee Pamela Love in the slideshow above. “But as an extension of the things that are inspiring to me, that I love and that make me happy, fashion is important to me.”

To any fans of Newsom’s music, this should come as no surprise. The 29-year-old, who rose to prominence in the early 2000s with a whimsical take on traditional American folk that marries her nymph-like voice with her virtuoso harp playing, has an understandable appreciation for anything organic or lovingly homemade.

For this reason she was the perfect person to be pictured with Love, who hand makes all of her jewelry. Here, Newsom is also wearing a similarly crafted, floor-length Rodarte dress. “Designers like Rodarte transcend the idea of fashion, and become more about the workmanship,” the singer continues. “To me all of their pieces are objects, the way a piece of art might be.”

One can’t help but ask if this is an approach that Newsom favors in her own work—after all, she’s famous for having recorded her early demo tapes on a Fisher-Price tape recorder, and all of her subsequent albums feel like they have the same DIY quality woven into them. “If there is such a thing as a handmade approach to recording, I certainly relate to that,” she says. “I still use as much analog equipment as possible so it’s all a series of physical objects, rather than this intangible world of Pro Tools.”

“It’s funny, but I’ve never played a contemporary Brit,” says Ben Barnes, pictured in the above slideshow with menswear designer Antonio Azzuolo. The 30-year-old London-born actor is best known for his role as the dashing Prince Caspian in the Narnia films, in which he donned a Russian accent. “I’ve also been Colombian, Spanish, American, and Irish,” he adds, “but the only English accent I’ve ever done has been something set in the nineteenth century.”

Sadly for Barnes, who spent the beginning of 2011 in London’s West End in a Trevor Nunn–directed stage adaptation of **Sebastian Faulks’**s Birdsong, his next few projects will be no different—not that he’s complaining. He’s just finished filming next year’s The Big Wedding, alongside a cavalcade of Hollywood A-listers—Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, and Diane Keaton, to name a few—and soon he’ll begin shooting the seventeenth-century-set fantasy caper, The Seventh Son, with Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges. “I’ve often said that Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors of all time, so to get to work with him is amazing.”

Until then, American audiences can look forward to seeing Barnes (this time sporting a Dublin accent) in the Irish comedy Killing Bono, which will be released next month. Based on the memoir by music journalist Neil McCormick (played by Barnes), it tells the story of how a young McCormick aspired to become a rock star, only to see his dreams overshadowed by his much more successful childhood friends in U2. “I got to do a lot of lunges in tight leather trousers,” reveals Barnes, who, just like Jude Law and Jamie Bell, got his start in England’s National Youth Music Theatre, and sings twelve songs on the film’s sound track. “Because I’m such a bad dancer and it was meant to be funny, it actually came very naturally to me.”

It’s been an eventful year for Theophilus London. Not content with being dubbed one of hip-hop’s brightest up-and-comers, the 24-year-old Brooklyn native, who released his debut album Timez Are Weird These Days in July, is also doing his best to make sure everyone knows he’s also the most fashion-savvy of that crowd.

When we meet (in a Chelsea photo studio, moments after he wraps his shoot with Carlos Campos and Norman Jean Roy for the November issue of Vogue), New York Fashion Week is coming to an end, and so is the exhaustive schedule he’s laid out for himself. “I tried to get more involved this year,” he says, slipping on a pair of round, John Lennon-style sunglasses and an oversize black felt Stetson. “But I thought, you know what? A lot of fashion magazines are covering my story, I’m going to open up my calendar for New York Fashion Week. I want to be accessible to the people.”

Certainly no one can accuse London of not being accessible enough. Over the last couple of days, he has performed at a multitude of parties across the city, and rubbed shoulders with the crème de la crème of New York’s fashion elite. The night before the shoot, he tells me he was having dinner with Tommy Hilfiger after the designer’s spring 2012 runway show. “It was cool,” London says. “We were just chatting and he tried to introduce me to people. I was wearing this vintage Tommy Hilfiger shirt and this girl came up to me and said, ‘You’re wearing Dad’s old shirt!’ I was like, ‘Oh, you must be his daughter.’ ”